Heavy lift cargo vehicles including aerospace vehicles such as rocket launch vehicles can be made of composite materials. Composite technology used in such heavy lift cargo vehicles may use adhesive bonded joints or mechanically fastened (bolted) configurations to join one or more composite panels or structures. Adhesively bonded joints are efficient joining methods for launch vehicle structures compared with mechanically fastened (bolted) configurations. This efficiency of adhesively bonded joints is primarily due to their inherent capability to distribute loads in a fairly uniform manner along an interface, while the use of bolted joints introduces stress concentrations and penetrations through the use of fasteners. Thus, the same general loading is transferred from one structure to another in a more mass-efficient manner by a thin layer of adhesive when compared to the discrete bolt pattern required for the same joint interface. Further, composites are particularly well suited to joining components through bonding due to their fabrication and processing methods that allow joints to be an integral part of the cure process for composite materials. However, adhesive bonded joints are susceptible to manufacturing defects that result in a failure between the adhesive and a surface. Such manufacturing defects may significantly decrease the load carrying capability of the adhesive joint. Hence, in some applications, mechanical configurations for the joints of composites structures may be preferred.